The damage done by the hippie stereotype

I was just thinking,

those of us born after the 60s and 70s have no idea what a hippie was like. People like me born in the 80s or after haven't met a 60s or 70s hippie, yet we seem to talk about them as if we have. The image of the hippie in television and film has been relatively harsh, to say the least. Because movie and tv companies executives were generally rich, aristocratic corporate types who hate hippies, shows like Brady Bunch and movies showing dumb lazy hippies who are stoned all the time, and give a totally distorted and skewed view of what these people were like back then.

It's remarkable the kind of harm this kind can do, and the extent to which we adopt and absorb images from film and tv as if they were direct experience. The only way you can know somebody is to have met them, and even then you surely don't know everything there is to know about that person. So surely claiming to know somebody from a collection of selectively chosen images is just absurd.

 

to be honest I find the hippie stereotype quite amuzing. Leo of That 70's Show or Larry Finkelstein in Dharma And Greg for example,but I expect people to understand that they are over-exaggerating characters and don't represent real people.

 

i met a dude once that was actually at woodstock and got to see hendrix play guitar...He looked like he fought in war LOL...He told me a pretty cool story but now i dont remember it....

I loved the whole hippe culture of the 60's..I dont know what i am....You could call me a hippy of the future

 

lol

 

Yeah, but it works for my Faux News watching neighbors...

 

You surely have a point, walsh. But I'm afraid I don't see any other use in the hippie stereotype than to amuse me, since it serves no other purpose these days.

 

I have noticed over the years a large number of television programs that portrays the "stonner smelly hippy",
and not coincidentally allot of anger from younger generations (there is a reason they are called "programs").

I have even seen youth here blaming a generation they know only vicariously through the idiot box for a great deal of current problems.

 

Well, I think we can blame a lot on that generation. Not specifically the hippies though, I mean the babyboom generation as a whole. On the other side, we can thank them for a lot as well (not just the hippies I'm sure) and the blame game hasn't much use anyway. I just get pissed if those old farts come and say it's up to your generation now, I'm gonna chill till I die 'cause I did my part...

 

I think that trying to define hippies is pointless without taking into account the nature of the older generations alive at the time as well as countercultures that preceded the hippie movement. The parents of the hippies had lived through a world war and had quite likely experienced a good measure of the great depression. Their values as well as attitudes toward authority were unavoidably shaped by those events. There's nothing that can compare to having to watch your use of staples like butter and flour because you've run out of ration tickets to reinforce thrift in daily life. The hippies had not experienced that first hand- neither did they hang on every word delivered through the radio from a president who was widely seen as single handedly guiding an entire country through a major military conflict that few would dare question our involvement in.

Hippies grew up in a press and media culture that tended to treat political leadership with kid gloves. The political elite were mostly from the very establishment that had seen the country through WWII and out of the depression and tended to be venerated by the older generation but were probably seen as a stodgy bunch of old men by the hippie generation. Future hippies were probably subjected to an almost worship grade idolization of the sitting president as they worked through the public school system. That president had served as a General during the war- becoming the supreme commander of allied forces. I quite imagine that there was a sense that the US had single handedly saved Europe from Germany and had rescued the world from disaster. To them the values that emerged from the beatnik and hippie movements were blasphemous.

Coming out of the 50's, the future hippies were preparing to enter high school and starting to develop an awareness of what was going on in the country and world - albeit filtered through the accounts furnished by news media of the time. The election of a visibly younger president in '60 may well have given a sense of hope that the country was finally emerging from the shadows of the old military guard and the constraining values of its generation. Kennedy was their president. That all changed in November of '63 and the man who took over looked like a member of the old guard and as his presidency unfolded and the conflict in Vietnam escalated. The conflict really got going as the hippie generation reached draft age. Their parents, who had been through a world war would likely see it as their duty to go but the increasing number of Americans returning home in flag draped boxes from a conflict whose rationale didn't seem quite so clear cut as an engagement resulting from an apparently unprovoked aerial bombardment of our Naval base on 12/7/41.

One can only really understand what a generational cultural movement was like by living through the time that shaped that movement.

 

"People like me born in the 80s or after haven't met a 60s or 70s hippie, yet we seem to talk about them as if we have."

Thats not true. I have met lots of them. My parents are 60s hippies, and so are their friends. Now, Of course I wasn't there with them in the 60s, but they are indeed 60s hippies. Only now they are "modern" hippies.

 

Really? What about to sway young people away from that path, influence drug laws by changing the image of users, and manipulate political ideals of the masses?

 

It does not have that purpose these days.

 

A person or animal can only be fully understood when observed in its environment. I don't think hippies are the same now as they were back then. How can they be? The entire generational attitude has changed.

 

You kidding me? Companies like Fox use it all the time. I saw a recent episode of Star Trek with a ridiculous hippie character who was a broke loser and couldn't perform his simple job.

 

Oh sorry, I misinterpreted it the other way around: like the stereotype has some use to become aware or conscious of those things. I see how you ment it now. Well, who cares what fox does with the stereotype, it's not like the today equivalent of an active hippie looks like a walking cliché from the sixties right? And besides fox everyone have made fun of the hippie stereotype so it's not like a one way abuse of the image. But the most important thing is that abusing the hippie stereotype should be like kicking a dead horse since it's a thing from the sixties/seventies. Everybody can do what they want with the stereotype from my point of view. It's a bloody stereotype from the past for Pete's sake.

 

They did the same thing with the pop image of the beatnik. Any culture or counter culture that by definition goes against or threatens the "establishment" (sorry about the cliche') is going to be subject to ridicule by the systems in place that dictate popular culture - that is the establishment. That being said, you don't have to look hard to find authentic - original hippies from the time period the OP is talking about. I would say that 70 percent of the professors I knew in college were old hippies and they were also some of the most intelligent and insightful people I've met - some of them taught physics, some taught literature, some taught modern dance - but you don't have to lurk around liberal arts colleges to find people who were actively involved in the counter culture. They're every where - you can't always identify them by appearance, but even a short conversation will usually give you a pretty darn good idea of what they are about. They still influence the culture (thank god), and the seeds they've sown continue to germinate in the minds of the people they influence.

 

Stinkfoot's right (great post by the way ) . Unless one has a time machine , there's no way to really understand any generations social , culture ,or value norms . It's all in books written pages now . The closest we can get today is understanding the generation prior and the ones after .

This generation in its time was really a fad I guess . It never lasted cause I don't think it could of ever lasted , in a materialistic , money driven capitalist country . Yet it was one of the most important generations . Cause for the first time , the youth began to question authority . For the first time a generation bagan to think for themselves outside the box . Unlike their parents pre and post war generation (who I do have very high regaurd for ) tended to acccept what they were told , and the duty and responsibility that society dictated to them . The hippy phenomenon culture movement indeed changed the world for every generation to follow . For good or bad that's in the eye of the beholder , some of which where the " sterotype" comes in . I don't think there's any harm , in the sterotype toady as the movement itself never lasted . Nor do I ever think it will replay itself in todays world , as much as some the younger people here would love to see. It belonged to a gereration an era . The kids grew up , cut there hair , went to college , got jobs and settled down . Just like their parents did before them . The rebelliousness of youth was replaced by children and responsibilities . Some say sold out , that's not true either . They had to change to survive to eat . Most ,not all still kept that magic time alive within them . Of there special time and place , where they changed the world . And much to their parents chagrin , the kids really were all right after all . The only way to understand today is books and people who lived through that time .

 

Oh yea, I agree. Most of the "boomers" sold out. They are nothing like they used to be. In fact, most of them became the establisment fascists that they hated so badly.

 

You can see the effects of the 60s revolution to this day. It's just easy to take them for granted.

Stereotypes be damned.